Daily Archives: 05/24/2017

100 MILLION plastic bottles are thrown away every day, choking our oceans in plastic waste. Governments meet in days to outline clean ocean commitments. If a million of us call on top polluters to stop the flood of plastics, the Head of the UN’s Environment Programme will announce our petition to the plenary and use our voices to help oceans breathe again.

It’s shameful. Half of the plastic made we use just once and throw out, choking our seas and all the animals in it.

But in days, our governments can stem this tide when they meet at a historic summit to outline their clean ocean commitments. Public pressure just got #2 polluter Indonesia to commit to a 70% reduction in plastic waste! Now we need to go after the other top polluters.

If one million of us get behind a global call, the Head of the UN Environment Programme will announce our petition from the summit podium and work with us to push countries to ban single-use plastics and let oceans breathe again. Add your name:

No matter where we live, each breath we take connects us to our oceans. Most of our oxygen is generated by them. They regulate our climate and weather, turn water into clouds that give us rain. And oceans provide a home for near 80% of all living things on earth. We can’t live without our oceans.

But now, our oceans can’t live without us.

Humans have destroyed ocean health and we need to fix it. The good news is, more than half the plastic trash in our oceans come from just five nations. If we focus global attention on the biggest polluters now, we can create global system-change for plastic-free seas. What’s missing is the motivation — and that’s where we come in.

Let’s build a massive call on our governments to stop suffocating our oceans. Once we reach a million signers, Avaaz will launch targeted campaigns on the top polluters to ramp up the pressure for them to act.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has just ordered federal prosecutors to seek the harshest punishments possible, including mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

In 2004, I was given a 55-year mandatory minimum sentence as a first-time marijuana offender — virtually a sentence to die in prison. I had sold marijuana three times to an informant who stated that I had a firearm in my possession.

I never used or even showed the firearm, but this allowed prosecutors to charge me with three counts of using a firearm in the course of a drug trafficking offense, that carried a mandatory minimum of five years for the first offense and 25 years for each of the other two offenses.

At my sentencing, even the judge disagreed with the sentence. He called it “unjust, cruel, and even irrational,” and pointed out that shorter federal sentences have been given to violent criminals such as murderers, child rapists, and even terrorists.

I was only 24 years old when I was sentenced. While imprisoned for 13 years, I missed my children growing up and the fruits of a promising music career. Yet, no problem was solved. This waste of human life must end.

I’m only free because bipartisan lawmakers and advocates, and even the man who prosecuted me, came together to say that my sentence was wrong. My release was part of a changing attitude toward nonviolent drug offenders, with both Republicans and Democrats working together to make sentences fairer. But now, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is working to undo this progress.

Sessions decision to order prosecutors to seek the longest sentences possible reverses a directive from former Attorney General Eric Holder that instructed prosecutors to use their discretion and avoid long sentences for low-level drug offenders.

Thanks to the women in this room and people all across the country, we worked really hard — and it’s now been more than three years since Congress passed the Affordable Care Act and I signed it into law. It’s been nearly a year since the Supreme Court upheld the law under the Constitution. And, by the way, six months ago, the American people went to the polls and decided to keep going in this direction. So the law is here to stay.

I’ll do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this happens again by holding the responsible parties accountable, by putting in place new checks and new safeguards, and going forward, by making sure that the law is applied as it should be — in a fair and impartial way.

They exemplified the very idea of citizenship — that with our God-given rights come responsibilities and obligations to ourselves and to others. They embodied that idea. That’s the way they died. That’s how we must remember them. And that’s how we must live.